100% with you, but it’s not always easy to get control of your own recruiting. I’ve also seen HR get upset when their involvement is not what they expected.
Agreed, which is insane! We'll spend untold zillions fine-tuning and A/B testing the process by which we get users, but when it comes to getting coworkers it's "Well HR says the applicants have to make an account to apply so I guess that's just the way it is".
It will be that way inevitably as an organization grows, usually it's an investor requirement to prevent outright nepotism hires or discrimination. No one cares too much for the first few dozen employees but anything larger usually will come with "ffs go and implement at least some basic hiring standards to reduce the legal risks".
For what it's worth, in the US, the legal risks are negligible.
So long as you don't discriminate against a protected class, you're usually good to go. Nepotism is bad business, but it isn't illegal.
Investors do care about bad business decisions, so it makes sense for them to require good hiring practice. However, if a sole proprietor -- or a business with all its shareholders -- decides to hire inept cousin Vinny to keep him from idling about the house, that's usually legal. In a family-run business (where there is a paper-thin wall between business and personal finances), it may even make financial sense.
This differs from almost any other jurisdiction in the world.
Note I used HR for everything other than sourcing. The bottleneck is usually identifying people and initial phone screens. The rest of the process is legitimately HRs job.